Collections in dialogue

A masterpiece from the Museo Egizio in Turin recounted by the Vatican Museums

4 December 2018 – 30 June 2019
Room I, Gregorian Egyptian Museum

A new exhibition project is underway with the inaugural event of 3 December:“Collections in dialogue”, organized by the Vatican Museums in tandem with the most important national and international museum institutions, with the intention of creating valuable reciprocal opportunities for dialogue, exchange, research and scientific growth. It could be none other than the Museo Egizio in Turin – which has already been in “dialogue” with the Pope’s Museums for more than four years – in the role of first authoritative partner in this new initiative, focusing on the exceptional loan of one of the key masterpieces of the Piedmontese museum: the statue of Amenhotep II.

For six months, until 30 June next year, the renowned pink granite sculpture – which has never before left the magnificent Gallery of the Kings – will welcome visitors at the entry of the Gregorian Egyptian Museum in the Vatican Museums. The handsome sovereign, portrayed kneeling in the ritual act of offering two globular vases to the deity, will be the centre of a site-specific museum arrangement, presenting to the public the founding principle of Egyptian culture: the compensation for the transience of man through legitimized royalty.

“Collections in dialogue” thus celebrates the museum space itself as the ideal place for dialogue. With this presupposition, the Vatican Museums andthe Museo Egizio intend to respond to the mission that every cultural institution, by its very nature, is called to perform: to tell its own story and to recount the past it represents.